Hand of God

My cousin brother, who lives with my parents, sent me this picture the other day; with the email subject – Guess who? Who in the world cannot identify the hands of their parents; those hands that held you first time you were born, ones that taught you how to walk, ones that held you all through your growing years and will forever!

"Hand of God"

I replied right away that it was my mother’s hand.  As obvious as is her saree in the back…I still instantly recognized her hands, the particular shape of her nails, the wrinkles she lately has developed..all through her physical hard work. She is a working woman, working both at home and at the bank! In the recent months when I lived with her during the birth and early days of my son, I noticed how she is busy at home all the time. Always cleaning something, furniture, grains/lentils, kitchen, vegetables or cooking. Of course she does watch TV, her favorite Marathi serials. But in these times when life is so easy and quick she still does a lot of things the old way. My husband those days once said, “How much your mom keeps working. Every room she leaves is neat and clean”.

As we had a couple of chain mails on this picture, I remembered a phrase ‘Hand of God’. Sometime ago it was someone’s email password, I don’t remember who. That’s how I know this phrase. I thought it was a perfect caption for the picture.

I googled the phrase just to see where does it come from; came across Soccer’s Deigo video – Hand of god where he made a goal with his hand and won the world cup for Argentina!  I further googled to see if it had any mythological reference. Well it has in Jewish and Christian culture.

To me, the caption brought deeper levels of interpretation of this simple picture. J